North West Premier Edna Molewa has fired her suspended agriculture department head, Emily Mogajane. But Mogajane has hit back by taking the premier to court.
This is the latest episode in ongoing upheavals in the department of agriculture, conservation and environment, where six officials have been suspended and four directors arrested following a forensic investigation into corruption.
Mogajane’s supporters, including the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union, believe she has been victimised because she commissioned the audit.
Mogajane, South Africa’s first black vet, applied last week to the Mafikeng High Court to have her dismissal set aside. The plea, which names Molewa and North West agriculture minister Eliot Mayisela as respondents, was postponed to May 11.
Molewa axed Mogajane three weeks ago on grounds that she had “polarised the management and staff of the department, leading to infighting” and had “continuously, during her suspension, continued to issue negative statements about government in the media”.
The premier also accused Mogajane of flatly refusing an offer “to negotiate her exit” when informed “of the terrible, undesirable and unbearable relations that currently exist between yourself and the government”.
Mogajane was suspended last August, in the same week as a cabinet reshuffle that also saw her minister, Duma Ndleleni, redeployed.
The official reason was that she had told senior management and academics at the Potchefstroom Agricultural College that the province would terminate Afrikaans as a medium of instruction from the beginning of 2006. The comments were widely covered in the media and sparked outrage among Afrikaners.
Mogajane claimed her remarks were quoted out of context and that she was merely referring to a report on language policy at the college.
Mogajane is currently under the National Prosecuting Authority’s protection, after she provided information on corruption in the North West.
Despite her dismissal, she emerged unscathed from an internal disciplinary hearing relating to her language comments, as the hearing did not take place within the required 60 days after her suspension.
The suspension was set aside on February 22. In her court papers last week, she said she had reported for duty the next day, as she understood that the ruling had lifted her suspension. However, Mayisela told her to go home.
Later she was told to report for duty on March 6. The minister then in-formed her “that he had taken a decision to review the chairperson’s ruling and instructed me that I was to go home and not to resume work”.
Mogajane then filed an urgent application asking the Labour Court to declare the North West government’s refusal to allow her to resume duties unlawful. The application was dismissed, Mogajane said, because she had been “placed in a favourable position by continuing to earn a salary while staying at home”.
In the dismissal letter, Molewa says service delivery has suffered because of the dispute between Mogajane and the government. Mogajane argues in the court papers that she cannot be blamed for poor service delivery because she has been barred from her office.
Molewa’s spokesperson, Cornelius Monama, said he did not find it appropriate to engage with Mogajane on her dismissal via the media.
However, he added: “We reject the insinuation that by dismissing Dr Mogajane, the provincial government undermined the fight against corruption in the department.”